Moderna Therapeutics Announces Appointment of Stephen Hoge, MD as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and New Drug Concepts 12/19/2012 6:46:22 AM

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Moderna Therapeutics, which is developing a new platform designed to spur the body to create its own therapeutic proteins to treat a wide range of diseases, announced today that Stephen Hoge, MD, currently a partner at McKinsey & Company, will join the company as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and New Drug Concepts on January 1st, 2013. In this newly created role, Dr. Hoge will lead corporate development efforts, including corporate strategy and business development, as well as work with scientists around the world to develop novel drug concepts enabled by messenger RNA.

Moderna is pioneering the development of messenger RNA Therapeutics, a novel biotherapeutic modality with the unprecedented capability of stimulating the body's natural ability to produce therapeutic proteins. The successful development of messenger RNA Therapeutics could drastically improve the ease and speed with which novel drugs may be developed and dosed, potentially opening up hundreds of new targets for drug development. Given the wide variety of potential applications, a core pillar of Moderna's business strategy will be to partner with companies, patient organizations, and others to rapidly accelerate the development of new treatments for patients.

"I am delighted and very proud to welcome Stephen Hoge, who brings a unique combination of skills to this critical position including a deep understanding of biological pathways and a proven mastery of drug portfolio valuation," said Stephane Bancel, president and founding CEO of Moderna. "Stephen's energy, creativity, passion to help patients, and vision to treat diseases in a fundamentally new way will make him a great addition to the Moderna executive team."

Prior to Moderna, Dr. Hoge was a partner at McKinsey & Company and a leader in the firm's global Healthcare and Corporate Finance practices. At McKinsey he advised senior management teams of leading biotech and pharmaceutical companies on a wide range of strategic, financial, and operational issues. He also led McKinsey's thinking on R&D portfolio development and valuation. Prior to joining the firm, Dr. Hoge was a physician in New York. He holds an MD with thesis from the University of California, San Francisco and a BS in Neuroscience from Amherst College.

"I am thrilled to be joining a terrific team and a very special company," said Dr. Hoge. "The most disruptive ideas are deceptively simple. When you really start to understand Moderna's technology, you realize that it changes everything; not just biology, but also operations, finance, and even core beliefs about timelines and the structure of R&D. The potential implications are so profound that I knew I had to be a part of this company."

About Moderna

Moderna is revolutionizing the restoration of protein function with Messenger RNA Therapeutics, a new treatment modality that enables the body to produce healing proteins in vivo. Moderna has created a novel method for producing a wide range of drugs in the body through the delivery of messenger RNA (mRNA) and is using this approach to develop first-ever treatments for a wide range of diseases that cannot be addressed today using existing technologies, and to drastically reduce the time and expense associated with creating therapeutic proteins using recombinant technologies. Visit www.modernatx.com to learn more.